Columnist Ron Kantowski: Sign of the times: Coach has no fear of opening playbook with practice closed

Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2005 | 9:24 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

This is what I saw on the first day of full pads football practice at UNLV:

Three punts that appeared to be sailing out of bounds, a field-goal attempt that clanged off an upright, a bunch of wobbly passes outlined against a blue-gray August sky (here's to you, Grantland Rice) and finally, a couple of tight spirals, which probably meant that Southern Cal transfer Rocky Hinds was getting in a few reps at quarterback.

There's a new sheriff in town, and first-year Rebels coach Mike Sanford has decided to close practices to media, boosters, administrators, girlfriends, wives and any kids belonging to Kurt Nantkes, last year's 25-year-old UNLV quarterback. That's his prerogative of course, but what it means is that unless you are intrigued by the flight of the football, there's not much to be gained by dropping in on practice this year.

That said, it wasn't exactly like Stalag 17 at Rebel Park on Monday morning. Actually, Stalag 13 is more like it. When equipment manager Paul Pucciarelli, who was patrolling the perimeter on a golf cart approached, I told him I knew n-u-u-thing, just like Sgt. Schultz.

Limited access to the practice field, at least the way Sanford has it set up now, is more of a nuisance than a deterrent to showing up. There are even unobstructed views from each of the big wrought iron gates that former coach John Robinson put up to, ironically, make the practice field more inviting.

From the parking lot side, you can see injured Rebels "Working on the Railroad," i.e., pounding a sledgehammer against a giant tire which, I guess, is supposed to hasten their recoveries. From the Lied Athletic Complex side, you can see what appears to be a swarm of ants running the plays that carried Utah to an undefeated season last year with Sanford as offensive coordinator.

It isn't that the distance from the gate to the practice field is all that great. It's just that the Rebels are so small they appear to look like ants, even from close range.

All kidding aside, Sanford apparently wants to discourage those who have little business hanging around practice from watching it, not to ban those who have slightly more reason to be there from observing. I wasn't interrogated or led away in handcuffs when I showed up unannounced. More importantly, there wasn't an ugly scene with a university vice president, which is what happened the last time a UNLV football coach ordered practice closed.

That would have been during the Jim Strong regime, when the prickly former Notre Dame assistant noticed a man wearing a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows watching practice from the grassy knoll at Wilson Stadium across the way. When the man insisted on staying, Strong got in his face and used the magic word in an attempt to shoo him away during top-secret preparations for one of those crucial (wink, wink) Long Beach State games.

The trouble is that Dr. Lyle Rivera didn't appreciate being told where to go, much less where he could stand. A couple of months later, Strong was standing in the unemployment line. Not that that wouldn't have happened anyway.

Sanford, who seemed to be going out of his way to accommodate the media until now, didn't exactly bristle when I asked him about the closed practice policy afterward. Based on what I've seen so far, he's not exactly the Bizarro World version of Jim Strong.

"There has been some questioning of it," he admitted. "The reason we decided to close practice is cell phones and the speed of the Internet."

To drive home his point, Sanford said Mack Brown this past weekend likewise decided to close practice at Texas when a Longhorn went down with an injury and his parents read about it on the Internet before practice was even over.

Similarly, Sanford said that when Rebels offensive line coach Gary Bernardi was an assistant at UCLA under Bob Toledo, who insisted on leaving the practice door open, a trick play the Bruins had designed for Arizona practically wound up being diagrammed in one of the Wildcats' chat rooms.

It used to be that loose lips sank ships. Now it's more like laptop computers and an AOL account.

"We don't want to give up any advantages," Sanford said by way of explanation that almost sounded like an apology.

What Sanford probably doesn't understand is that he could hand the spread offense to one of us on a cocktail napkin and we wouldn't know what to do with it, unless somebody spilled a beer at Happy Hour.

Put it this way: Unless the Rebels have a play called "Everybody Go Deep" he needn't worry about sports writers selling spy secrets to the enemy.

Still, it's not as if the media won't be able to do its job just because it won't be close enough to the practice field to hear an offensive tackle grunt. It's just that I kind of miss the old days -- like last year at this time -- when John Robinson would pull up on his trusty golf cart and ask if you had everything you needed.

He'd even give you a ride out to the line of scrimmage, and if there wasn't anything that required his immediate attention, he would regale you with an anecdote or two about how USC was able to beat Notre Dame 55-24 after trailing 24-3 at halftime, or how the Rams' Sean Landeta could have his punt blocked by the wind at Soldier Field during the 1985 NFC title game against the Bears.

But Sanford can take solace in that there are a lot of UNLV fans who thought Robinson's time would have been better spent working on a passing game than on entertaining the press.